


Yellow

by Perpetual_wednesdays



Category: Original Work
Genre: First work - Freeform, Gen, Horror, Minor Character Death, Murder, Original Characters - Freeform, scary story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 14:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19231324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perpetual_wednesdays/pseuds/Perpetual_wednesdays
Summary: Anyone who grew up in a small town is bound to have a story about that weird house down the street, but this one takes it a bit further than most.This story is based on my own experiences, though admittedly I have added in some fabrications to make it more interesting. You'll have to decide just what those fabrications are though.





	Yellow

I suppose it would be sufficient to say that as a child, I had some weird neighbors.  
Take for example the Russilinos, a family of eleven children and two drug addict parents living together in a house built from the foundation of the mother's childhood home that had burned down decades before, or even better, the Browns, who not only had security cameras every five feet around the perimeter of their property, replaced their front door with one made of steel after several neighborhood children attempted to go trick or treating there one Halloween night.  
Stranger through, than any of the run of the mill small town crazies, were the people who lived in the big, somewhat decrepit yellow house at the corner of Smith Pond Drive and Chestnut Tree.  
Looking back on it, the house itself looked like something out of a horror movie, with paint curling away from the wooding siding to revel damp mold below, carelessly boarded up windows with gaps revealing peeling wallpaper and the occasional shuffle of movement from within. Looking at the sorry state of the house, it was truly difficult to believe that anybody called that place home.  
However, one must never judge a book by its cover, as there were in fact three people who lived in that big old house. According to the older kids in the neighborhood it was two men and a woman who captured small children who were out wandering after dark and fed them to their dogs. According to my parents, the people who lived there were simply eccentric, and according to my elderly grandmother who has since passed on, the people living in that big yellow house were the very embodiment of the evil of Satan.  
As I grew older, the tales of the terrors of the house and the people within it lost their intrigue, and by age Fourteen, I had all but forgotten about the days when I had feared being stolen away to be used as dog food by the people inside. Fourteen years had passed, fourteen years of riding my bike past the house almost every day, fourteen years of never seeing a person enter or leave the house, and fourteen years without ever hearing the supposed man eating dogs make so much as a peep.  
It was early August of 2016, just a few short weeks before the start of school, and just a few short weeks before our high school careers would start, when the horrors of the house were brought back to the front of the neighborhood kids minds during a late night game of truth or dare, when one of the boys, Richard Cooper, dared me and Arial Potts to enter the house and go to the third floor, where we had to wave to the other five out of a window to prove that we had made it up.  
After much debating and name calling, the eight of us set out, sneaking out of the house and into the woods, making our way back through the expanse of wilderness that separates the neighborhood from the outlying house.  
Walking quietly through the woods at night wasn’t by any means an easy task, and with the amount of noise our little group was making it didn’t seem to be at all possible that we’d make it to the house without someone's parents coming out to put a stop to our antics, yet somehow we managed, and in a final flurry of whispered doubts and giggles, there we were.  
Eight fourteen year olds standing in a field of uncut grass, staring up a house, each silently wishing for someone else to back out so they wouldn’t have to themselves. Ariel and I looked at each other, each begging the other to back down. When neither of us did, I steeled my resolve and stepped tentatively forward with Ariel close behind me.  
The screen door snapped shut behind us as we walked into the house, causing both of us to jump. After the shock of the noise had worn off, both of us began to giggle, our giggles quickly turning into laughter, and our laughter then turning into full blown hysterics that sent Arial to her knees.  
It wasn’t more than thirty seconds after Arial's hands touched the ground that she let out an affronted gasp, shooting back up to her feet, frantically wiping her hands on her thighs and shorts.  
Shining the dim flashlight we were equipped with over her showed a dark substance covering her hands and legs, brushing it off as some weird mold, we hesitantly made our way through the house, hoping to find the stairs as quickly as possible.  
At the far end of the living room stood a massive fireplace made of brick and stone, complete with elaborate carvings of vines curving up the outside pillars. It wasn't until I shone the light into the ashes of the interior that it occurred to me that anything might be truly wrong with the house. A quick nudge of the ashes confirmed my suspicions; scattered among the ashes lay several small bones, marbled with what I could only assume to be charred skin and smooth bone. I waved Arial over and hesitantly looking downwards at the bones.  
It must simply have been a bird we decided, a stupid bird who flew down the chimney and was burned up in a fire that had been burning years ago. Upon deciding that was the only logical answer, we walked further into the house, through another noisy screen door and into the kitchen leaving the bones and discomfort behind us. At a first glance the kitchen seemed normal, even pleasant in comparison to the living room. The walls were a pale pink color, and outside the window we could see the remnants of a once clearly loved garden could be seen. A somewhat off putting smell drifted from a small closet along the side of the room, though in an old, uninhabited house, that hardly seemed to be a point of concern to either of the two of us.  
Once we began to look closer though, the room was no less disturbing than the previous, the realization of which came about after the beam of the flashlight moved across the center of the floor, revealing strange etchings in the floor. Throwing back a small rug in the center of the room revealed a symbol carved into the floor, and a quick re scan of the room revealed small jars of herbs and figures made from sticks, both things that had seemed common place, if not somewhat unique decor before the drawing on the floor had been revealed.  
As if we had come to a unanimous agreement to complete the dare as quickly as possible, Arial and I took off through the kitchen, clambering up the back stairwell as quickly as possible, and into the large open room that made of the second floor of the house.  
Or at least we would have come out into the empty room, if Arial hadn't come to a dead stop, almost sending me toppling backwards down the stairs.  
Brian Myers, a stout 40 year old man with thinning hair, perpetual grease stains on his shirts, a beer in his hand, and a mean look on his face ran a small auto body shop approximately four miles down the road from our town. Dispite having never seen a car there to be fixed in my entire life, the business had been up and running for as long as any of could remember. The adults in town whispered about him being bad news, and it was no secret that twenty years prior the man had had a hand in the disappearance of two teenage girls, but had never been convicted due to a lack of evidence.  
More importantly though, upon pushing past Arial and onto the second floor, I was greeted by his corpse, naked and pale mutilated by fresh stab wounds and what appeared to be a brand on his lower abdomen.  
Panic took over, and as I stared at the body in front of me, I could feel each of my limbs growing cold, as if ice was spreading through my veins. Beside me, Arial's voice seemed to be growing further away, and as I turned to look at her, a wave of darkness over came me, sending me crashing to the floor, where I can only assume I stayed until we were collected by the police.  
Its been three years since all this occurred. Three years, and I still hesitate to go in the forest alone. Three years, and I still jump each time I so much as think I hear a noise in the night. There's only four of the original group of neighborhood kids left, four of them and their families moved far away from here soon after the incident. Me and my family though? We stayed.  
As for the old yellow house on the corner of Smith Pond Road and Chestnut tree, well, now its the big blue house on the corner. A family of six moved in not terribly long after the incident, and in fact my little sister now baby sits their pack of unruly elementary school children. Since they've moved in, the neighborhood has been a lot calmer, a lot more friendly. I think everyone around here missed the sounds of children playing in the streets after we all moved or became too scared to set foot outside out doors.  
I'd even say that personally those kids have helped me to move on. It's not so scary to venture into the forest with an optimistic child begging to show you her fairy village. In fact, I'll even go out by myself now.  
Even now though, I'll stumble across things that convince me that maybe this isn't all over. That whisper I hear when there is nobody around, those strange effigies that show up on occasion, hanging from the branches of trees, spinning listlessly in the wind, or those dead animals I'll find, strung up in branches in a way that must have been planned out. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe it's just paranoia and an over active imagination, but I can't help but wonder when it's going to happen next. Who's going to vanish? Who will be found dead in the water? But maybe I'm not, maybe there is something out there.  
Something is out there, in these woods, I can feel it. Maybe it's a curse, maybe its a monster, but whatever it is, I can say with confidence its something inhuman, something incredibly evil, and whatever it is, it's simply biding its time before it strikes fear into this town again.


End file.
